


Travel Light

by kerlin



Category: CSI
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-08-31
Updated: 2010-08-31
Packaged: 2017-10-11 09:07:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,476
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/110733
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kerlin/pseuds/kerlin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You can run, but are you so sure you want to hide?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Travel Light

It wasn't a well-attended funeral.

That didn't really surprise Sara, when she thought about it. You had to care about someone to want to attend his funeral, and to care about someone, you had to know him. Grissom had made personal mystery an art form in the same way he'd made the solving of mysteries a science.

So here they were, a scattered handful sitting on hard wooden pews and learning more about Grissom through Catherine's eulogy than they had from the man himself. Nick was crying, silent tearless sobs with great gulps of air. Lindsey's legs didn't reach the floor, and she kicked her legs back and forth, watching them as they sliced through the colored bands of sunlight.

Warrick's hands were folded in a pseudo-supplication, forehead resting along the lines of his index fingers, thumbs digging into his eye sockets, and his eyes were closed. Greg clenched and unclenched his fists, and when he tipped his head down his tears glinted on his cheeks.

Sara trailed her fingers along the silky wood, tracing the grain, circling around the swirl of a knot with the tip of her index finger. Catherine returned to sit down, the cushion puffing dust into the light and the bench creaking slightly at the added weight.

They buried him on a bright sunny day, under a clear sky. Even so, when Sara pressed the back of her hand up against the marble of the tombstone, the cold seeped down into her bones.

###

_In Seattle, when she found him sitting in the corner chair, chin on his hands, she ran back outside into the rain and stood shivering in the parking lot, looking up at the block of light that was her window._

_He stood, looking down at her, and her tears mixed in with the rain as it dripped down her cheeks._

###

"We didn't want you to have to go through this," Nick said urgently, and picked up his pace to a jog to catch her. "Sara!" He caught her arm just before she pushed the door open, and she rounded on him, fists swinging wildly. "Hey, whoa!" He backed up, arms spread wide, the universal symbol for surrender.

Sara stood, drawing deep, shuddering breaths through her nearly closed-off throat. "Since when do you get to make decisions for me?"

"Since you stopped being capable of making them yourself," he snapped, reclaiming his grip on her arm. "Don't go in there, Sar."

She yanked away, hard, and glared at him until he ducked his head in shame. Her entire body was seized with fine tremors, and she locked her knees rigidly, her hand finding its way to the doorknob and twisting. She didn't look away from him until the last possible second, and entered the hospital room.

Words were telegraphed over her head, judging by Catherine's reaction and subsequent mutinous relaxation. Sara took the last few steps somehow, sat on the rolling stool pulled up next to the bed, and slid her hand into Grissom's.

It had been entirely too much to hope for to imagine his eyes opening, but she realized that sometime on her way to the hospital she'd pictured just that. Her fingers traveled up around his ribcage, skimming the stiff fabric of the hospital gown, and she rested her hand flat on his chest.

His warmth seeped into her hand as it rose, and fell, and rose, and fell - and was still.

###

_In Dallas, he told her a joke, and she choked back the giggle but still had a smile on her face for the rest of the day. Everyone wanted to know what was so funny. "You had to be there," she told them, safe in the knowledge that they never could._

_The bubble lasted until she realized that he would never have told that joke._

###

She woke from the nightmare to Greg's hand on her shoulder, shaking her urgently. Auditory perception didn't kick in for a few seconds, but from his face she could tell something was wrong. When she blinked, the world became a little less blurry, and there were people standing in the hallway, staring at her through the large glass window of the break room.

"You were, uh, screaming," the lab tech explained as she struggled upright, the transfer pattern from the couch stiff and sore on her face and forearm.

"Do you have my results?" Sara asked when she was finally in a sitting position.

"Sara, you need to go home," he tried, and winced when she trained a murderous look on him, but forged on ahead. "I don't even know the last time I saw you go home."

Now that she thought of it, she didn't either. More than twenty-four hours, but probably less than forty-eight. She had changed into her spare set of clothes at some point, but now they felt creased and soft. Closer to forty-eight.

"Results?" she repeated pointedly, rubbing a palm across the bumpy area on her cheek, chuffing circulation back into the soreness.

"No match," he said unhappily. "I'm sorry."

She caught the snarl before it erupted, choosing instead to slam a fist into the metal beam of the wall. The skin over one knuckle split, and was deathly white for a few seconds before blood began to seep through.

###

_In Raleigh, she left the motel room as soon as she checked in, and wandered dark alleys until she found a smokey, filthy bar. She sat alone at the bar and nursed a glass of whiskey - which she thought might have been his drink, and so next round she ordered tequila - and smoked, and glared daggers at anyone that came near her._

_Eventually, she slid off the stool and picked up a pool cue, and no one said anything as she set up and broke for a one-person game. Pool was all about physics - numbers and angles. She'd always been good at trig._

_"Three in the right corner pocket," he called from the bar._

_She sunk it without looking up at him._

###

"His body has suffered severe trauma. It's reacting in the only way it knows how - retreating into itself, conserving energy and trying to heal." Dr. Bristol's voice was smooth, measured, a hint of kindness without any of the cloying aftertaste of pity.

"Will it succeed?" Catherine asked bluntly, and Sara couldn't help herself. She winced, and shuddered violently, wrapping her arms around herself.

Bristol smiled wanly, and looked over at Grissom's still form, a rounded interruption in the sterile hospital sheets. "I've seen some pretty amazing things happen, Ms. Willows."

The respirator clicked and hissed, and the EKG beeped its steady monotone.

"You didn't answer my question," Catherine pointed out.

Nick dropped his hand down to her shoulder, and Sara jumped, ducking out from underneath his warmth.

"I sincerely doubt it."

Catherine was pressing for details, nipping away at the facts, terrier-like in her stubbornness, but nothing she could do elicited more than a resigned shrug. And then it was time to talk of health insurance and living wills.

Sara slipped away from them to stand next to the hospital bed, at Grissom's pale face nearly lost against the white pillow, expressionless, slack, giving even less away than it had when animated and carefully guarded.

The respirator clicked and hissed.

###

_In Chicago, she checked into the cheapest, flimsiest motel she could find. He'd always had good taste. Maybe he wouldn't follow her into this dingy hell-hole, and she could have some peace between the by-the-hour rooms and the cockroaches skittering across the floor._

_But no, there he was, standing by the window and looking out on the parking lot as two men took drunken swings at each other. He said something about the effects of alcohol on the brain, and the false bravado and overcharged testosterone that caused bar fights. She sat down on the bed with her back to him and buried her face in her hands._

###

They let her ride in the ambulance. Hank had taken one look at her, covered in blood, mouth gaping open silently in horror, and had jerked his shoulder to signal for her to scramble in beside the stretcher.

They were moving so quickly that her foot was almost caught in the door as it slammed shut, and she had to hold on tightly so that she didn't go flying across the tiny space when the vehicle peeled out.

Sara found a perch near the cab end and wedged herself into the corner, watching the nimble fingers as they clamped arteries, inserted needles. The IV bag cavorted wildly through the air as the ambulance made another turn, and one of the EMTs bit his lip as his latex gloves became slippery with blood and gripping the necessary tools became difficult.

Distantly, above the roaring in her ears, she heard the siren as it wailed above her head. She'd learned once that the faster the siren, the more urgently the ambulance needed to move.

The electronic shriek rose and fell and jumbled together in her head, a neverending cycle that sped up and sped up...

###

_In Boston, he was gone for two weeks, but she never stopped looking over her shoulder. He would be back._

_And then one morning, she turned the corner and there he was, sitting on a park bench and watching the swan boats. He tilted his head to look at her and for a moment she gave in and sat next to him in the warm sunshine._

###

The dull thud was in itself nothing alarming, and Sara merely looked upward at the ceiling - its point of origin - and frowned, then turned back to inspecting the lock with a magnifying glass.

The sharp crack that followed the thud was something else entirely, and across the room Warrick's head jerked up at the same time and ran for the stairs.

The crack became a cascading series of pops, Fourth of July fireworks, all coming from the upstairs bedroom Grissom had disappeared into just a few seconds earlier.

Three - four - five -

Sara was at the door for the sixth, and the seventh was the sound of Warrick's standard-issue Beretta opening up as his fire took the man in the chest.

She skidded across the carpet on her knees and tried to cover the open holes with her hands, but there were too many of them, and she only had two hands. Warrick was swearing in a loud, explosive voice that still sounded terrified, and he screamed into his cell phone for an ambulance.

Sara looked down, keeping her eyes away from the mangled mess of Grissom's torso, and met his eyes through the haze of tears in her own. He blinked, once, twice, and opened his mouth to say something, but all his breath succeeded in pushing out was a bubble of blood.

###

_In Boise, she knelt by the decomposing body and he whispered in her ear about out of place lividity and flies that lived in urban areas. She told the officer that the body had been moved, and when he smiled at her, she almost smiled back._

_But then she remembered who was kneeling next to her, and she swallowed the smile and told the coroner's assistant that he could have the body._

###

"Looks like a pretty straightforward B&amp;E," Sara said, flicking on the light to illuminate the open drawers, the overturned furniture.

Warrick stepped around a shattered dish and turned back to Grissom and Sara, still at the doorway. "People buy these big expensive condos and then only come down a few weeks a year. They're practically begging to be knocked over. Makes you wonder why anyone would leave anything valuable here."

"Human nature, to a certain extent," Grissom said with a shrug. "Out of sight, out of mind. The owners probably spend whole days not even remembering it exists, much less that it's a security concern."

Sara followed in Warrick's steps and turned. "Well, these particular owners obviously had some concerns. That's not a cheap system." She gestured to the number pad by the door they had just entered through. "Inside job?" she theorized.

"Or a well-researched one. Someone knew that the Kellogs had just left and, and wouldn't be returning for some time. If the neighbors hadn't called in a noise complaint, no one would have known about this," was Grissom's answer.

"Well, if he made so much noise he woke up the neighbors, he's not as smart as he thinks he is." Warrick knelt down beside the broken plate and reached behind him to pull out fingerprinting equipment.

"Hmmm," Sara said, turning her attention to the lock, whose fresh scratch marks were a tell-tale sign that it had been picked.

"I'm going to check out upstairs," Grissom called, his foot already on the first step.

###

_In Miami, she snapped, and yelled and cried and threw everything within her reach. He just stood, impassively, hands in pockets, inscrutable expression on his face._

_When her neighbor pounded on the door and asked if she was all right, she didn't unlatch the chain, because then he would have seen that she was alone in the room._

###

Sara knocked on the doorjamb, and smiled at Grissom when he looked up, uncrossing her legs and closing the door behind her as she entered the office. Suddenly nervous, she rubbed her hands together when she sat down, studying the tile floor for a second before finally looking up to meet his bemused expression.

"Yes?" he asked, tipping his head to the side.

"Are we okay?" she blurted out, and seized the courage of the moment to continue. "I mean, I'm more than half-expecting us not to be, because that was just...uhm...you know what, I'm really sorry. For the whole thing. I had an impulse, and I acted on it, and I never should have kissed you." When he didn't answer, she swallowed the sick bubble of fear and pressed ahead. "I put us both in a...compromising position. And I'm sorry." She wasn't. Not at all. But she was sorry for the stiff awkwardness it had created, the look of astonishment in his face that she'd had to close her apartment door on before it burned any more.

"Sara..." His voice was slightly amused, and she darted her eyes to meet his. "Don't apologize. I kissed you back."

Sara gaped at him, rewinding and replaying and rewinding and replaying and a warmth began to spread through her limbs. It traveled to her face, lit up a ridiculous smile. "So...we're okay?"

"We're okay."

###

_In Detroit, he told her she was beautiful. Not obliquely, by comparing her to baseball, so she could later question if it had really happened. He just looked at her, with that half-smile of his, and told her she was beautiful._

_That's when she knew she was losing it._


End file.
